Stuff and nonsense...

[lirion]

I have a magical colour changing shirt... When is aw it in teh store, I love the deep olive green colour of it. I bought it, got it home, puilled it out...and ti was a rich chocolate brown. I stared at it for awhile confused then shrugged and decidedit was stilla ncie colour, if not the colour I'd originally desired and thT I msut have had some

Comments

For those who think too much

[journey2master]

Different light sources have different colours, even if you don't recognize it. With sunlight at noon being the standard of "white light", it is found that incandescent light bulbs are lower on the spectrum or warmer in colour while fluorescent light bulbs have a colour of green to blue which is higher on the spectrum. Now, with a simple understanding of transmitted light, we move on to reflected light and the perceived colour of a material. In sunlight, a yellow jumper is yellow to your eye because the material it is made from absorbs light that is not yellow and reflects yellow light for you to see. If the light source you are viewing the yellow jumper has a portion of the yellow spectrum missing, then that portion can not be reflected and the jumper will have a different colour to your eye. There is also the factor that some fabric reflect some frequencies of light more readily than others which can affect the perceived colour of that material.

On your next episode of "For Those Who Think Too Much"...
"Dad... Why is the sky blue?"

Cheers!
D.

Re: For those who think too much

[lirion]

What you say makes sense. I think it's more that I'm used to seeing the difference in terms of intensity - in different light a blue top might look lighter or darker, or lean more to say the green spectrum of things, but still have recognisably blue appearance quality.

The green/brown shift was a bit mroe extreme than I am used to and that's why it startled me some.

Thanks for the info though - I hadn't been thinking of it in those terms. I'd gotten as far as the different type of light clearly affected what I was seeing and that's about it.